Ride. Write.

I’m a fairly positive person. Except when I’m not. Each morning I wake up and my brain seems to have dragged itself back into a gloom and doom state. Bit of a drag. I shall now go look in the mirror and chant “Cheer up, Buttercup” five times at my reflection and see if I my spirits are raised or enraged. This video was shot in gleeful sunshine on Friday. It is now Monday, which can only mean the cast is scheduled to come off today! That’s good news, though I have been warned that using my wrist will be …

And so, it has come to this. Me, sitting in Florida looking at maps, and working out my options for continuing or pulling the plug on my ride across America. I still want to go, obviously. I mean, I have to go somewhere anyway since I technically don’t really have a home right now. Might as well go ride a bike. Anywhere. I’ve made some plans. Here they are, in order of preference. Plan A – Ride Across America, Take 2 Using theatre of the mind, simply pretend that I hit an invisible pause button on May 19th. Hit play …

I shot and made this yesterday and have hesitated to hit publish. Not because I look a wreck – believe it or not, I actually look worse today since they took the stitches out. More because of how I sound. I had a lot to say about why I think LIVESTRONG is amazing. And I said it pretty well in the first take. Unfortunately, I started weeping in the middle and that take is pretty much unwatchable. The edit here captures enough I think, but I’m still not particularly eloquent with it. And I got sleepy while editing, so it …

UGG UGG FIRE UGG UGG I’m a bit of a fire girl. And by that, I mean that while camping in my youth, I always exercised my dominance over fire and harnessed it inside a circle of rocks beaten smooth by a river. Or something. And over that fire, I would place a homemade cooking skillet that my Dad constructed by welding three legs onto a disc from a disc plow. Dang, my Dad is awesome! I call him MacGuyver. But that thing was heavy. And I think to throw a device like that on a Bob Trailer may push …

MY KINGDOM FOR A TENT I’m a little worried. Worried that I’m enjoying the accumulation of gear a little too much. That I find too much joy in researching camping materials and gnatty little moisture wicking technologies. That I squee too hard when I find something that weighs next to nothing to put in my pack. That I bore people to tear tsunamis when I excitedly explain the twiggy-like properties of a tent to them. I’m worried that I’ll look back on this time a year from now and say: “Well, that was the best part of the trip.” Because …

What am I gonna eat? This? Or this? Honestly, not really sure. Whatever’s at hand, described in the enticing menu copy of a fine diner, or glistening on the shelves of a high-class gas station. Who knows? I have procured a camp stove, so some old school open-flame stuff is gonna go down (and hopefully not come back up). The key issue is going to be the consuming enough to deal with the calories I’ll be burning. There’s some wacky math in this video, so nutrition nerds have-at-it! Basically, in trying to work out what I’m going to eat, I’m …